'Mum was beautiful, wild... she was the ultimate rock groupie'

With their long dark hair, flashing brown eyes and full lips, the two women strolling along the beach in Cancun, Mexico, looked remarkably like sisters.

Only a close observer would notice their age difference, and guess that they were in fact mother and daughter.

For Heidi Hines, it was a magical moment. She was 18 and on her first road trip with her youthful mother, the flamboyant, fun-loving former model and ultimate rock-star groupie, Jo Jo Laine.

She was approaching 40 and had, after years of seducing and entertaining famous rockers, seen better days.

But she'd saved hard for two years to afford this precious bonding time and wanted to use it to pass on to her daughter the most valuable advice she could give.

"It was the best week of my life,' recalls Heidi.

"It really was truly special and the first time that my mother and I had spent so much time together without anyone else around. We let our hair down and got to know each other like friends."

Jo Jo, who was by then indulging in the alcohol abuse that contributed to her early death at 54 last Sunday, admitted to Heidi for the first time that she had a drink problem.

She warned her daughter not to follow the same hedonistic path that she had trodden.

Heidi is now 32, and herself the mother of two children - son Jesse, one, and daughter Jaylie, five. She lives with her partner Jeff Wayling, a band promoter, in South-West London.

Like her parents - her father is Denny Laine (real name Brian Hines), the former guitarist with Paul McCartney's Wings - she has been drawn into rock and is a singer-songwriter with a little-known all-girl band.

As yet, she has not had the success she craves. She performs mostly in pubs and small clubs. But neither has she succumbed to the dark excesses that so blighted her mother's once glittering life.

As tributes poured in last week for Jo Jo, who had been suffering from cirrhosis and liver cancer, Heidi poignantly recalled the moment that her mother tried to save her from a similar fate.

"We were walking along that beach when she suddenly stopped," says Heidi. "Mum held both my hands in hers and, with a fiercely determined glint in her eyes, said, "Look at the mess I've made of my life and you will see what drugs and alcohol abuse can do.

"It's cunning, like a fox. It sneaks up on you and, before you realise it, you're an alcoholic."

"I remember it as if it was yesterday. She wanted me to know that life could still be enjoyed without going overboard.

"She knew how destructive her lifestyle had been and didn't want me doing the same. Everything in moderation, she told me. It's the soundest advice she ever gave me.

"I've never forgotten it and I've tried to live my life that way. I drink rarely and I never do drugs."

Heidi says: "Despite the wild and crazy times, the men who came and went in her life and moving from home to home like gipsies, Mum always tried to make my two brothers and I feel loved.

"She was the most incredible mother ever. We were best friends. There was nothing I couldn't discuss with her - except her illness. She was very reticent about that."

One of the Seventies' most famous magazine models, American-born Jo Jo lost her virginity to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969 and counted Rod Stewart and Jim Morrison among her many lovers.

She became close friends with The Who and Eric Clapton. As Laine's wife she travelled the world and became a confidante of both Paul and Linda McCartney.

And between 1991 and 1996, she even joined the notorious harem of girlfriends, known as wifelets, who shared the Marquess of Bath's 10,000-acre Longleat estate.

For more than 15 years Jo Jo lived the dream of millions of teenage fans who fantasised about dating a rock star.

She was stunningly beautiful and her perfect body always put her in pole position. But it was her sheer determination and confidence that made her stand out. Rockers could not help but love her.

"She was one of ten children and perhaps fighting for attention in a big family is what made her so flamboyant," suggests Heidi.

Whatever the motivation, at 17, as the Sixties drifted into the Seventies, Joanne LaPatrie, as she was born in Boston, Massachusetts, moved to Los Angeles to work as a model and made the cover of Vogue.

She often said the following three years passed in a blur of drugs, casual sex and alcohol.

"When she was 20, she arrived in England determined to marry Paul McCartney - she had a big crush on him,' says Heidi.

"But she told me that the moment she met my dad, after a Wings concert, she knew they were soulmates.

"She fell in love with him, even though he was just a waged member of the band with little money. My brother Laine was born within a year of them getting together and I followed 11 months later.

"They were the happiest times. My earliest memories are of my eldest brother and I being surrounded by love and laughter.

"Even when finances were tight, she would find enough to see that we never wanted for anything. To the rest of the world she might have been the ultimate rock chick, but to us she was just the best mum. She was always there for us.

"No matter what was happening in her life, we always came first. We were very close.

"She taught me to look after myself, making sure I learned to cook and clean the house. She was quite strict and vetted all my boyfriends. She didn't want me to lose my virginity until I was 18, and I didn't out of respect for her."

Indeed, Heidi remembers a caring, if sometimes feckless, woman. "We lived on a houseboat before Dad started making lots of money. Mum was always in the kitchen cooking. She liked us to sit down to meals together, even if Dad was away on tour.

"It was a fun house and she was always smiling. She used to dress us up in colourful, fancy-dress costumes and we would role-play."

Denny co-wrote the hit Mull Of Kintyre with McCartney, and his new-found wealth enabled the family to buy Yew Corner in Middlesex, a house which had been A.A. Milne's inspiration for Pooh Corner in his Winnie the Pooh books.

Yew Corner became legendary for the Laines' wild parties throughout the Seventies. But Heidi recalls: "We were always kept away from that sort of world. Mum tried to create a stable home and sheltered us from all that.

"I suppose we were either staying with family or friends when they threw those parties.

"The ones I attended were family occasions. We played by the swimming pool or sang songs in the music room. Paul and Linda often visited with their kids or we would go to stay with them at their estate in Scotland.

"Linda was especially lovely and always made us feel at home. When we went on tour together it was like one big family. Mum was happiest then. She just loved being around lots of people."

Heidi was just four when, in 1978, her mother's brother Thaddeus, a heavy drug user and schizophrenic, shot his father Philip during an argument. "Grandfather died nearly two years later without regaining consciousness,' says Heidi.

"At the time Mum and Dad were not getting on too well and she started to drink heavily. She said she hated the smell of it but it reminded her of her father. He also liked to drink and it made her feel close to him. She dearly loved him."

Although her parents effectively separated in 1980 after Denny had an affair with Jo Jo's best friend, Heidi says she hardly noticed.

"I suppose Mum was the centre of our world. We hardly realised Dad wasn't around. She filed for divorce but shielded us from the pain of it."

Heidi's relationship with her father has remained strained and the two only recently started talking after a ten-year gap.

After the marriage break-up, Heidi recalls her mother quickly falling in love with Randy Rhoads, a 25-year-old guitarist with Black Sabbath.

"I was so in awe of him,' she says. "He was tall and very good looking. My mother was giddy with happiness when he was around."

On March 19, 1982, six months after they met, Randy was killed in a plane crash in Florida. It was then, Heidi says, that her mother's binge drinking became more destructive.

"She cried uncontrollably and constantly. I was a kid and didn't know what to do.

"A couple of times I had to call an ambulance because her eyes glazed over and she was unresponsive. Mum just couldn't cope. I don't think she ever got over Randy's death. One of my aunts flew over from America to look after us."

In her grief Jo Jo fell for builder Peter O'Donohue and they had a son, Boston. By late 1985 the relationship had broken down amid violent rows. O'Donohue was later convicted in connection with a £40million bullion raid in Knightsbridge and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

"I was about 11 when all this happened,' recalls Heidi. "We emigrated to Boston, where Mum managed a band called Manish Boys and lost a lot of money when they flopped.

"We moved often and ended up in New York, where she tried to make it as a singer. She even cut an album. I think it was all Beatles songs, but it was never released.

"Our lives were somewhat peripatetic. She was always financially on the edge, but somehow she had the strength to keep going. She taught me never to give up. Watching her health deteriorate in recent months was the hardest thing that I've ever had to cope with."

Jo Jo ended up living in impecunious circumstances in a shabby flat above a shop in St John's Wood.

"My mother kept her illness a secret because she wanted to protect us,' says Heidi, who acted as her main carer in the last few months. "But her health deteriorated and eventually she had to confess."

Just after she was diagnosed with cancer last Christmas, Jo Jo joined Heidi's band to perform at a pub in Camden, North London.

Heidi says: "She wanted to have one last gig. She was great and showed me how to please a crowd. She was totally fearless.

"I don't think she regretted anything about her life except the drinking. And perhaps that so many of her old friends were either dead or lived far away. She was lonely in the end. All she had was us."

They learned she was dying only a month ago. Heidi says: "Her doctor called to say that she'd been taken off the liver-transplant list. I was devastated.

"My wonderful vibrant mother, who we thought would stay young for ever, would not live to see her grandchildren grow up.

"She was always active but in the end she could barely walk upstairs. It took her ten agonising minutes to get out of the couch in the living room that she'd turned into a bed. She had very little energy.

"She became forgetful and suffered terrible mood swings. She didn't sleep at night and would cry all the time from the pain she was in. It was so hard to watch."

Jo Jo died after fracturing her skull when she fell down stairs while on a nostalgic visit to meet the new owners of Yew Corner - the home where she had been happiest and where she had always said she wanted to die.

"No one saw it happen," explains Heidi. "Apparently she didn't make a sound. It's as if she decided it was the right place and the right time. I miss her terribly and can't believe she's gone. But I'm glad her suffering is over."